Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham
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Ever call a wrong number and then have somebody call you right back and give you hell?
“You just called my phone number. What the #$%^ did you want?”
And you want to say – “I was trying to call my wife/sister/best friend/chiropractor/somebody else important, but, you know, sometimes you mess up.”
Only by this point, you’re not nearly that civil.
You know, because, I mean, what da dillyo, right?
Well, this was about to happen to me the other day.
“Heather, this is Chris … Heather? … Heather? Hello!”
I was trying to call my sister-in-law to get directions to an MMA training academy in Harrisonburg where my brother-in-law has been training some recently, and obviously she was having trouble hearing me, or something, because she kept saying, “Hello? Hello? Hello?”
Turns out it wasn’t her.
“Hi, this is Nicole,” said the person on the other end of the line a few seconds later when she called me back.
“Were you trying to get me on my cell phone?”
“Um …” I started, then apologized for having misdialed.
Her next words startled me.
“Oh, no problem. Have a nice day,” she said.
She didn’t curse me. Didn’t accuse me of having tried to sell her something, which happened to me on one misdial a few years back.
“No problem. Have a nice day.”
It was a tiny gesture, but it came across big-time to me.
Chris Graham is the executive editor of The Augusta Free Press.
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